Vendors
The tools people ask us about, described accurately.
We sell audits, so we compete with some of these companies. That is a bias worth knowing before you read a word, and it is why each page leans on the vendor's own documentation rather than on our opinion of them. The categories matter as much as the verdicts. A monitoring platform is not an overlay, and one of the six ships both, which is exactly the thing a procurement rule against overlays will walk straight past.
Overlay widgets
A script you add to your site that draws a toolbar for visitors and tries to repair your pages automatically as they load. Those are two products under one name and they fail in different ways, so it is worth keeping them apart. This is also the category with the documented problems.
- acBaccessiBeThe best-known overlay widget, and the subject of a $1 million FTC consent order.Read the assessment →
- UWUserWayA widely installed overlay widget with a free tier, owned by Level Access since March 2024.Read the assessment →
- AEAudioEyeA hybrid model. An automation layer, plus paid human testing and remediation.Read the assessment →
Monitoring platforms
Platforms that crawl your site on a schedule and report what they find over time. The core product watches rather than changes, which is a genuinely different job from an overlay. One of the two below also sells add-ons that blur that line, and we say which.
Software and services
Companies selling a mix of software, audits, and remediation work. What you get depends on the engagement and the people staffed to it, not on the logo.
How to read these
We have no affiliate arrangements and no commercial relationship with any company listed here. In this market that is not boilerplate. The FTC's complaint against accessiBe alleges that agency partners were offered a 20% discount they could keep as commission, and that $1,900 and $850 were paid for two published reviews. So the claims on these 6 pages carry their sources, and the ones that land hardest are the vendors' own words about their own limits.
For the documented record on overlay widgets as a category, including the lawsuit numbers and the FTC order, see the overlays page. For the free browser tools, see WAVE, automated browser checks, and Lighthouse compared.
Whichever tool you are running, the site underneath is what gets measured.
The free scan opens up to 10 of your pages in a real browser and reports what the markup actually contains, rather than what a dashboard says about it. Decide what you need after that.